Sunday, 30 August 2015

Gone fishing (no carp jokes here)

The same friend who tried to buy the portrait of me standing outside the pub expressed the desire for a painting of goldfish, for some reason. Look no further I said, and told her of a series of goldfish paintings done by H.I. a few years ago. She is coming round to look at them this afternoon, and may buy one.

I have never understood the way Coy Carp have become a commodity so valuable, that a whole criminal industry has been built up around them - there are now fish rustlers, whereas before here in G.B. we only had to worry about herons.

I suppose it stems from Japan, where they can get curiously obsessed with certain things, and highly attuned to the nuances of colour or markings on them which somehow make them stand out as exceptional or rare.

A rich client of mine has a large pool filled with massive carp which swim around languorously in perfectly pure, generously aerated water, having nothing better to do than eat and look pretty.

One of these fish is pure white, with an almost perfect orange disc in the middle of its forehead. I think he paid about £8000 for this single fish.

I stress the point about it being almost perfect, because if it were truly perfect, the fish would be the living embodiment of the Japanese national flag and would be worth about £30,000. Not one for the dinner table.

Marko - the pretend everything. Pretend Irishman, pretend mystic and pretend stone-carver. I bought him his first set of chisels, and he stood around in public, knocking tiny, meaningless bits of stone away from a small block without looking and ending up with a very slightly smaller block than he brought with him. Utterly, utterly meaningless waste of time and materials.

Musician? He makes a racket with a couple of bits of bone, but that's it. He is a total sham.

Carp are just overgrown gold fish, I believe. We once had a gold fish a daughter won at a carnival. It lived for several years in a one gallon tank on the kitchen counter, swimming its tiny self contentedly around. I succumbed to pleas for a larger tank, and the damn thing grew to accommodate the tank. Being curious, I eventually bought a larger tank. It grew into that. When I sold the house neither daughter wanted to assume responsibility for its well being, and I eventually found an admiring collector for my monster in its 20 gallon tank. Getting it down stairs and out of the house was quite a challenge. Never again.

I had an aireator in the one gallon tank that sent a stream of air down one side of the tank, across the bottom and up the other side. It happened that way because the aireator was designed for a bigger tank, but the best I could do. The damn thing rode the wave down, across, up the other side, flew across the top and took the down current again. After hearing it land on the counter one evening I kept a cover on the top. The girls changed its name from Goldie to Lucky.

I used to live with a fairground goldfish which survived the biggest domestic fire here in 1976. They couldn't put their hands in the water to take it out, so hot was it. The owner stayed with a friend - being burnt-out of the apartment - and the same night, her friend's cat ate it. This is a true story.

The fish painting has a nice swimming movement in it. I like it. An unusual subject. I have done several swimming drawings of humans but never fish. "Gone fishing" normally means gone out but you are still here.

The Japanese word for carp is koi ( not coy FFS). So if you say koi carp you are saying carp carp. Tautology.

In Japanese legend the koi represent strength and endurance and are used as a symbol for the Boy's Festival in May. In 1948 it became the Children's Festival (hooray for a equality). Families hang up carp shaped paper flags and kites.

(TMI? I blame the other end of the sofa who wants his laptop back.)

Btw I absolutely adore HI's wonderful painting and want to buy it. If only I had a) sufficient dosh and b) enough wall space

For some reason, my 'reply' button does not work today, so I will have to respond down here.

Ok, if you want to know the price of one of the glazed, framed, 17" x 23" (inc. frame) fish pics, one could be yours for £450. That's not the one in the above pic. The big ones would be £800, and they are 26.5" x 35", including frame.